Even Bradley Wiggins gets knocked off, but cycling is still worth the pain

If you ride a bike, you get knocked off. That's the way it is. Even if you're the most accomplished cyclist this country has ever produced and you ride a bike like a god, you get knocked off.

I've been riding bikes for 39 years. I've ridden a bike most days of my adult life and in my late twenties, I rode one around the world. I've been knocked off plenty of times. I've been hit by a tractor, dragged under a lorry and clipped by more wing mirrors than I can recall.

Of all the accidents I've had with vehicles, I remember the first most clearly. I went over the front of a car aged eight. It was my fault. I rode off the pavement, between two parked cars and into the middle of the road. The car braked (I can still see the horror on the lady's face), I hit the front wing and spilt across the bonnet. Remarkably, I came away with just a few scratches.

The policeman didn't actually say: "Who do you think you are, then? Eddy Merckx?", but this was 1974, and I did. Merckx crashed 70 or 80 times in his long professional career. Hitting the tarmac is a constant threat for pro cyclists: in a bunch sprint, it's a painful inconvenience, leading to a bit of what the hard men call "road rash". However, when you're hurtling down a Pyrenean mountain road and you're thrown from the bike, the gods decide your fate.

Bradley Wiggins never expected a Vauxhall Astra Envoy to decide his fate, but it nearly did this week when he was knocked off his bike on a training ride near his home in Lancashire.

While he was in hospital recuperating from a bruised hand and ribs, his mentor Shane Sutton was knocked off a bike while commuting across a Manchester suburb. Sutton, a former pro cyclist and now head coach at British Cycling, fractured his cheekbone and is still in hospital. As well as being inspirational, Wiggins and Sutton are great blokes and I join the chorus of cyclists in wishing them a speedy recovery.

Some of the media saw the funny side of the Wiggins accident, giving it a "OMG, you've only gone and knocked off Bradley Wiggins" spin. No cyclist thinks it's a laughing matter. The truth is that there are too many road accidents involving bicycles: 3,192 cyclists were seriously injured or killed in 2011.

It is ironic that two high-profile cyclists should be knocked off in the same week that the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group launched its "Get Britain Cycling" inquiry into how to increase participation in cycling.

So much needs to be done to make cycling safer that it's difficult to know where to start. I'd like to see improved infrastructure, some segregated bike lanes and new regulations for lorries. There should be a "cycle awareness" component of driving tests: the majority of driving instructors are in favour of this. The legal system needs to be tougher on sentencing for motorists at fault in accidents with cyclists. Cycle safety should be part of the national schools curriculum. When I recall the lingering effects of the 1975 public information film about motorbikes — "Think once, think twice, think bike!" — I wonder why there isn't something similar for bicycles, imprinting itself on the public consciousness.

Of course, cyclists can help themselves, too: not running red lights, riding further from the kerb and, at this time of year, wearing high visibility clothing and using flashing LED lights that register in the peripheral vision of motorists, are all important. For what it's worth, I don't believe that helmets should be mandatory, although I almost always wear one. Crucially, cyclists need to encourage more people to cycle.

A few years ago, I was in Portland, Oregon, where there are more journeys by bicycle per capita than in any other large American city. Jeff Mapes, a local journalist and author of Pedaling Revolution, told me that a turning point in the safety of cyclists on the city's roads happened when everyone who drove knew someone who cycled. That could be your neighbour's daughter pedalling towards the junction, or a colleague cycling up to the lights on the inside in the rain, which means you drive more carefully and have greater respect for cyclists as road users. We're a long way from that point in Britain, but the more people who choose to cycle, the closer we will get.

Whenever I'm in Cardiff, Bristol or London, I ride a bike. I love the thrill of riding in cities. As Jack London wrote: "Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living! … Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road … and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something!" Most of my cycling, though, is on country lanes round where I live in the Black Mountains in south Wales.

I ride a bicycle for many reasons: to get to work, sometimes for work, to keep fit, to go shopping, for a moment of grace, to bathe in air and sunshine, to stay sane and to hear my boy laugh. It is a broad church of physical, practical and emotional reasons. But at this time of year, when I'm staring down the barrel of a long winter, one reason is paramount: I ride to escape.

I ride for the silence; I ride to empty my brain; I ride for the void. Random thoughts do fall into this void — a line of poetry, an overheard comment — but they are like snowflakes falling on water. After an hour in the saddle, I'm mentally far, far away. There is some pain, but the brain has an antidote: endorphins — neurochemicals more potent than Prozac, which suppress pain and induce a feeling of wellbeing. Melancholy is incompatible with cycling.

As the American poet Diane Ackerman wrote: "When I'm on a bicycle the world is breaking someone else's heart." For that alone, I keep cycling, no matter the risk of getting knocked off again.

Rob Penn is the author of It's All About the Bike and a director of Bikecation